2020 Chinon, Rouge, Les Charmes, Charles Joguet, Loire

Les Charmes hails from a 1.5-ha slope of clay/limestone. The 2020 is an elegant, light-bodied style yet has plenty of richness within its core. You can expect ripe blackberry and blueberry-lifted fruit in a charming style. There is a lick of lightly warming alcohol, but it's not unbalanced. The wine displays a subtle tea leaf and fruit cake-like fragrance on the smart finish, which leaves an attractive, lightly chalky texture.A leading light in Chinon, the now-organic estate was founded in 1957 by Charles Joguet, a Chinon native sculptor and painter with an atelier in Montmartre. Joguet returned to found his domaine at a time when vines were part of a mixed farming approach – putting all your eggs in one basket was not the done thing. But the Burgundy wine lover was an artist, and artistic types tend to get away with taking an alternative approach, which soon became the norm. The Genet family have owned the estate since 1997 and had partnered with Joguet for a decade before the takeover. With 30 hectares of vines, of which 28ha are Cabernet Franc and 2ha are Chenin, the estate makes a wide range of Chinons, but fine wine lovers will best know it for its cuvées Clos du Chêne Vert and Clos de la Dioterie.Drink 2022 - 2027Rebecca Gibb MW, Vinous.com.com (August 2022)